Merry Christmas to New Zealand.

Today's picture is of the Pohutukawa Tree and is a special Christmas symbol in New Zealand. The New Zealand Christmas Tree - how beautiful. Thanks to all of my friends from NZ who sent me and him all those lovely Christmas wishes. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and get plenty of egg nog down yer neck! (For reasons known only to the scientific community! - New Zealand will get Christmas before we do! Something to do with the twirling of the sky or wobbling of the latitudes! But, I will not be left out and shall start my Christmas sampling of the Taylor's port tonight!)

Mr. Indi didn't feel too good again yesterday and spent most of the morning resting in bed. The doctor appointment was at 3 p.m so I had plenty of time to catch up on a bit of skivvying and an hour or so of wood gathering and kindle chopping. Between all this manual labour and pushing Mr. Indi in the transport chair - I shall soon have bazooms like Dolly Parton! Which will look rather odd on a woman who has the profile of a stick insect.

Dr. J was busy so we met with Dina - which is OK. Mr. Indi's blood test numbers were not much different from the previous month. His PSA has remained virtually the same at 87.7 - so at least it hasn't got worse. His hematocrit is 31.2 and hemoglobin is 10.6. So his red cell count is in fairly good shape and he doesn't need to do any more Procrit injections for the time being. As far as treatment - they are going to start him on yet another regimen of chemo. He will be receiving an IV of Cytoxan - once every 21 days and he will be taking VP-16 (Etopophos) capsules - one a day for 21 days beginning on the day of the Cytoxan infusion. The chemo has to be approved by our insurance so he probably won't start until next week as I'm sure all the health insurance office staff are attending important Christmas functions and conducting tests on the side effects of too much mulled wine combined with Brie on sesame crackers! Good for them!

Every time I think I'm going to have a day off - I'm WRONG! Today, I must go down to the Auto Club office and get the Pontiac registered for 2009. The tags are due by December 28th! Oh Joy of joys! Just what I feel like doing - but - I'm going to presume that there won't be too many people doing the same thing so should be in and out in a half hour or less - (Always the optimist!)While over on that side of town, I think I shall take Mr. Indi to his favorite steak place for lunch.

I was woken, very rudely, at 3:00 am today by a couple of putty tats who were expressing their love for each other under my bedroom window. It was too cold to go out and chuck a bucket of water over them - so I made a cup of tea - put the electric fire on and have done quite a bit of knitting - sweater all but finished! Everything has a good side!